There are no cheerleaders bounding across the baseline, no pep bands rattling the rafters and no student sections packed shoulder to shoulder.
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Summer high school basketball rolls to a quieter key with squeaky sneakers echoing in the balmy gymnasiums and coaches’ voices carrying a little louder.
But the George Yardley Tournament at Newport Harbor High never feels ordinary.
Played on the same hardwood that bears his name, the tournament holds a sense of nostalgia every summer in one of the oldest gyms in Orange County.
The 16-team tournament tips off today, July 16, and runs through Sunday, bringing together many of Orange County’s top programs. As is tradition, Coach Bob Torribio’s host Sailors draw the daunting assignment in the first round, facing perennial Trinity League powerhouse and national title contender Mater Dei tonight at 8:05.
If summer is about experimentation, growth and evaluation, this is trial by fire. Call it competitive hospitality or basketball diplomacy.
That’s what you do when you’re hosting a tournament, particularly on a court with such meaning.
Yardley isn’t just a name etched on the floor. The Newport Harbor alum is the only homegrown Orange County product in the Basketball Hall of Fame.
His daughter, Anne Yardley, is reminded frequently of her famous father. It is almost unavoidable in Newport Beach, and “nothing,” she said, provides more joy than hearing references or thinking about him.
“Every day something happens,” Anne Yardley said. “The other day I’m walking my dog in the neighborhood – and this is somewhere I’ve lived for (13) years now – and I run into my neighbor Chris and he asks, ‘Does your last name have anything to do with the court at Newport Harbor High?’ I said yes, and my neighbor had no idea he was my father.”
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George Yardley, the colorful and affable former NBA standout and Stanford University All-American in two sports, basketball and volleyball, revolutionized the game of basketball in the 1950s with the newfound and controversial slam dunk.
Yardley played seven years in the NBA and competed in six consecutive NBA All-Star games from 1955 to 1960.
While playing for the Detroit Pistons, Yardley averaged 27.8 points per game in 1957-58, an astonishing figure at the time, and was the first player in NBA history to score 2,000 points in a season.
With an opportunity to accentuate his milestone point, and instead of settling for a conventional layup, Yardley took a pass on a fast break alongside teammates Gene Shue and Sweetwater Clifton and threw down a thunderous dunk to reach 2,000, much to the chagrin of traditionalists. It cemented Yardley as a pioneer of the modern, above-the-rim game.
Mostly an inside player at Stanford, Yardley blossomed in the pros and also helped popularize the jump shot.
But the player known as “The Bird” might have been the most discontented superstar in America, because he didn’t like the NBA lifestyle and the toll all the traveling took on his family. Yardley retired at the peak of his game to make more money as an engineer to better support his family.
In the NBA offseason, Yardley helped the United States in the Cold War and Space War against the Soviet Union. His classified work included the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles Atlas and Titan; the interior valves and regulators; and helium pressure-control devices for the X-15, a rocket-powered research aircraft designed to explore the fringes of outer space. Once, during an NBA offseason, Yardley invented a liquid-oxygen seal that helped make the Titan operative.
Richard Dunn, a longtime sportswriter, writes the Dunn Deal column regularly for The Orange County Register’s weekly, The Coastal Current North.
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